Cambridge IELTS 16 Academic Reading Test 2

• Read each passage carefully. You can highlight text by selecting and right-clicking.
• Answer all 40 questions. Move freely between parts using the question palette.
• Submit before time runs out — auto-submit at 60:00.

Cambridge 16 Test 2 stitches together landscape art, microbiology and decision research. Passage 1 traces the White Horse of Uffington and similar English chalk hill figures, with 56 such geoglyphs scattered across the southern downlands. Passage 2 reviews Ed Yong's book on microbes — I contain multitudes — and our coexistence with the bacteria that populate every surface of our bodies and the planet. Passage 3, How to make wise decisions, summarises empirical research on wisdom across cultures.

True/False/Not Given and summary completion together account for twenty-seven of the forty marks. Passage 1 has eight True/False/Not Given and a five-gap summary. Passage 2 mixes three multiple choice, a four-gap summary and six Yes/No/Not Given on the book reviewer's stance. Passage 3 ends with four multiple choice, a five-gap summary and five True/False/Not Given items. Yes/No/Not Given in Passage 2 is the harder of the two truth-judgement blocks because reviewer-versus-author distinctions matter.

Plan sixteen minutes on the White Horse, twenty on microbes, twenty-one on wisdom, with three minutes to transfer. Wise decisions come from slowing down at the right moments — this is one of those papers.

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